“Obama never drank the Kool-Aid on the (Afghanistan) counterinsurgency case"

[bigtree]

August 8, 2010

Letter From Washington
A Collapsing Policy in Afghanistan

By ALBERT R. HUNT

WASHINGTON — When Gordon Goldstein sees Afghanistan as “déjà vu,” a mission that’s “unraveling,” it isn’t the ramblings of another armchair critic.

Mr. Goldstein is the author of an acclaimed biography of McGeorge Bundy, the national security adviser under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, who became haunted by the misadventure he helped devise in Vietnam. The book, “Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam,” was on President Barack Obama’s nightstand as he was setting Afghanistan policy last year; it got a rave review from Richard C. Holbrooke, now in charge of Afghanistan-Pakistan policy for the United States.

Mr. Goldstein argues that it’s clear the counterinsurgency and population-protection policy, as set out in Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s manifesto last summer, is failing, reminiscent of the grandiose plans Mr. Bundy promulgated in Vietnam in the 1960s.


Watching Mr. Obama, Mr. Goldstein recalls the contrast on Vietnam that Bundy described in the 1960s between the skeptical Kennedy and the more gung-ho, accepting Johnson. Bundy speculated that Kennedy, who believed that military means never should be deployed in pursuit of an indeterminate end, wouldn’t have engaged in a protracted war.

“Obama never drank the Kool-Aid on the counterinsurgency case; that’s why he gave McChrystal fewer troops than he wanted and set a date to start withdrawing,” Mr. Goldstein says. “This is illustrative of doubt and caution, of not wanting to be boxed in. That was Kennedy’s signature style on Vietnam.”


read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/09/world/asia/09iht-letter.html

[Vincardog]

1. How many American and Afghan lives is Obama willing to sacrifice so HE won't be BOXED IN?

[another saigon]

2. I second that!

What a bunch of hogwash to defend killing. It makes me sick.

[bigtree]

4. I was disappointed in his 'split the difference' approach

. . . half in on a half-assed strategy. You're right . . . just more lives lost, with nothing more to show for it but more 'enemies' aligned against the propped-up Afghan regime. It's a self-perpetuating recipe for a deeper 'war'.

Question is, will the President know when to acknowledge the futility and counterproductive effect of his escalation and reverse it? I think he's more focused on keeping his war face intact, so I think the best we can really hope for is for him to declare some sort of Iraq-like 'success' and draw down the forces. Much too late for those who are tasked with holding his political line in Afghanistan, as well as for the innocents caught in the way of the repercussions and attacks fostered and initiated by his nation-building ambitions.

[Arkana]

3. If the conspiracies are to be believed, it's why the CIA had Kennedy whacked, too.

[zipplewrath]

5. So he doesn't think it will work

But he's willing to continue to kill? I'm losing the thread here. Is Obama defending his policy or tolerating it?

[bigtree]

7. if I had to choose between the two

. . . I'd have to say, tolerating it.

I do think he's drunken some of the kool-aid about setting up the Afghan regime and military (and militias) to do our dirty work. That's behind the half-in approach. He's also still couching his policy behind his holdover generals who are desperate to prove that their 'pollyandish misadventure' isn't the tragic failure it's unfolding into. He's yet to set his own defining course, apart from enabling the hapless commanders who keep us bogged down there.

[Ikonoklast]

6. Pay 'em off, give them some money if they stop killing each other,

then get the hell out.

Anything else is a complete and total waste of time, as we do not have generations to wait to see if the Afghanis will change their way of life completely and drop tribal loyalties in order to become a 'nation'.